Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Change Firefox 3.6.2 Default Tab Ordering Behavior

If you've recently upgraded to Firefox 3.6.2, you may have noticed how the default behavior for opening new tabs by middle-clicking links has changed. Specifically, new tabs open immediately after the current tab instead of at the end of the tabs.

This behavior drove me *nuts* since I prefer my tabs be in a FIFO or First In, First Out ordering - I expect that the first tab I opened be the tab I'm going to read next, and the most recent tab I've opened should be at the end of the list. The new LIFO or Last In, First Out ordering made little sense to me.

Since I couldn't find any apparent way to change this in the preferences, I cracked open about:config and searched for "tabs". I found the "browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent" option, which was set to "true", and I changed it to false. Perfect! Now my tabs are back to the way they used to be.

The Fix:Type "about:config" into your address bar, or click here for a direct link.

Search for "tabs.insert" and you should see the following:

Simply double click this entry to set the value to "false".

UPDATE:I found this issue in the bug tracker. Apparently it's been marked WONTFIX =(